Dynasty
by GoWithTheFlo20
Summary: Elim Garak was a man of many secrets. Too many. So many, in fact, that a few were even surprises to himself. When a four-hundred-year-old stasis pod is discovered, the crew of DS9 are in for quite a shock when inside lays a slumbering half Cardassian, half human with magic at her finger-tips. Cardassian!Harry, Fem!Harry,Fem!Harry, Dad!Garak, Garak/Bashir. Fem!Harry/Mekor
1. Chapter 1

Summary: Elim Garak was a man of many secrets. Too many. So many, in fact, that a few were even surprises to himself. When a four-hundred-year-old stasis pod is discovered, the crew of DS9 and our favourite tailor are in for quite a shock when inside lays a slumbering half Cardassian, half human with magic at her finger-tips. A deep dive into Cardassian culture. Cardassian!Harry, Fem!Harry, Dad!Garak, Garak/Bashir. Fem!Harry/undecided. Family orientated.

* * *

 **PROLOGUE: BLEED OUT.**

 **Harry's P.O.V**

There had been pain. Harriet knew that much. Through the flashes, the jolting sensations, the unexplainable shouting and mumbled words that faded to static, there had been excruciating pain. She couldn't remember much, nothing really, beyond the final death of Voldemort. She remembered the dirt and blood, the stench of rot cloying in the air, the taunting face of Tom, the laughter, and her own shout of Expelliarmus as Voldemort disintegrated and floated away in the wind as nothing but curling ashes.

She remembered falling to her knees, she remembered the utter relief that it was simply over, finished, and she remembered that twisting pain that hit her in the sternum. Things became jagged then, memories that didn't fit together, shards of sensation and noise that left her feeling dizzy and not wholly herself. Someone ran to her, there were hands holding her as she spasmed, shouting, screaming for help… Hermione… Yes, that had been Hermione's voice, Harry remembered.

It all came too fast then. Being carried. Rushed words. Flashing lights. Faces, so many faces. Delirium. Too cold. Freezing. Why was she so cold? _What's wrong with her? Get the healers! DNA-matrix mutating… Degeneration… Spells used to change appearance… Lily Potter… Spell rebound and stripped her of the transfiguration spells… Biological transfiguration… Reptilian?... You can't reverse something that is and always has been a part of her, this is truly what she is and-… Can't help… Muggle science may… Experimental… Stasis… Only way…_

Then the darkness came, and Harriet knew nothing. For a long while, or perhaps only seconds, Harry couldn't tell, there had only been this void. Silence. Peace. Emptiness. Tranquility that was shattered when that searing light came. She groaned, nerves feeling raw, explosive, as her eyes burned and scrunched from the sudden brightness. She tried to jerk her hand up, over her eyes, anything to block out that scorching light, but her muscles felt like gelatinous fatty masses.

The world came to her slowly, steadily, in bits and pieces. There were lights above her, bright lights, burning lights of hot white that almost bleached everything else away. They made her hiss and groan and grimace as her head flopped to the side, trying to lurch back from the sudden assault on her pupils, blinking rapidly to clear the pulsating spots that filled her vision.

Gradually, the world came to her softly, in malforming shapes and flashes of keen colour. The room was cold looking, sterile but grim, with its cutting edges and slate grey and stone beige pallet, dusted with bronze metal. There were screens around her, black things with green, red and orange shapes, as strange as the rest of the room. She was on a bed of some sort, a sturdy cot, with an odd arching dome of… Glass? Glass, curving around her chest, more lights and strange symbols sweeping across. By her bed, propped against the wall, was a… Pod. Yes, a pod. Harry remembered that pod. She remembered the soft green velvet against her skin. She remembered the warmth of it. She remembered being lowered down, a slither of light streaking across her face as the lid came down right before the darkness took her completely.

Merlin, her head hurt. Had she been attacked? Had the deatheaters struck back after their master's demise? Hermione… Ron… She needed to find them. Harry jolted as the bizarre glass dome beeped, lifting from the bed as it swung away into a compartment of some kind, hidden at the side of her cot. The noise was loud, the light was too bright, she was freezing, the smell of aseptic barrenness stung her nostrils and her head felt like she had been trampled by centaurs.

Bleating and moaning like a new born fawn trying to stand for the first time, Harry heaved herself up, muscles shaking violently, head pounding, stomach churning. Where was she? What was going on? Where was everyone? Her hand gave out from underneath her and her leg slipped as she tumbled off the cot, falling to the soft, plush floor of this strange room. This time, her groaning was cut short by the sound of jogging footsteps. One… Two pairs, Harry counted as she scrambled up to her knees, fighting valiantly not to throw up, pushing away from the door and the oncoming noise.

A man was the first to enter. He was a tall fellow, around thirty, Harry would guess, with amber skin, warm eyes and a boyish sort of smile. He was dressed as peculiarly as this room was, in an overall, pressed and neat, official looking, with a blue flash to his shoulders and high-neck. A blonde woman came in behind him, dressed in the same uniform as the man.

Harry scrambled further away, her back clashing against the base of her cot, stinging and wincing at the clang that rang out. The man smiled at her, dimpled, white tooth and friendly. Harry's gut roiled as her throat dried and bile rose. Who were these people? Where was madam Pomfrey? Where was she?

" _We're not going to hurt you. I'm just going to scan you, okay? Keep calm. This won't hurt a bit."_

The man said as he took a small step forward, grin widening. Harry swallowed heavily, trembling hand tensing at her side as she pushed herself further into the cot at her back, the cold metal making her shiver. Cold. So cold. She was going to bloody freeze. Worst of all, she couldn't understand a word of what he was saying, not a single one. Hermione. Hermione would know what was going on. Harry needed to find her. Now.

The man's hand dropped to his side, to his belt, as he pulled something free. A rectangle, a metal contraption that bleeped and bopped and flashed a sickly blue. Harry's heart jumped into her throat as he aimed the thing at her, stepping even closer. Her gaze jumped to the door, but it was blocked by the blonde, and there was no way out behind her, just the damned pod. Her eyes trailed to the pod, spotting something red and shiny laying at the base, pushed up in the corner. _Hermione's beaded bag._

"Stay back!"

Harry barked as the man came closer. He halted immediately, brows creasing as he cocked his head at her, but whatever he may have thought, it didn't deter him from mumbling in that strange language again, from taking another step closer. Out. She needed to get out and find Hermione, Ron, Molly, anybody. Harry's hand shot out towards the pod.

"Accio wand!"

The bag lurched in the pod, falling over as the clasp came undone, something thin, long and pleasantly polished flying out of the depths of the deceivably small bag. Harry could almost laugh as her wand, safety, came hurtling towards her, snapping into her hand like a missing part of her own body. Without it, she felt naked. Wherever she was, thankfully, Hermione had half the mind not to leave her defenceless. As soon as she had a full grasp on her wand, when the world stopped spinning as much and the threat of doubling over to vomit passed, she aimed the tip at the man.

"I said stay back!"

Away. She needed to get away. She needed to breathe. She needed warmth and somewhere darker, and, Merlin, the world was spinning around her and she couldn't think straight. Chest quaking from the heavy breaths she was inhaling through flared nostril, Harry latched her free hand behind her, onto the rim of the cot, hauling herself to a stand, despite the protest of her quivering legs. The man pulled back a step, eyeing her, gaze flickering between her own and the wand in her hand as he slowly tapped something, a little oddly shaped button, on his chest and began to speak in that rolling language of his.

" _Bashir to security, can you please come to sickbay? Our… Guest is awake and she's looking quite frightened. I don't think she can understand us and the universal translator isn't picking up on her hissing sounds. She's also managed to arm herself with some-sort of rudimentary weapon."_

Nothing made sense. No one was familiar. This room, these people, the cold, it was all so alien and Harry was having trouble focusing on anything else but the pounding of her heart. Deatheaters? Where were the deatheaters? Hogwarts had been filled with them, so many… Where these deatheaters? If so… Had they lost the war? Were Hermione and Ron on the run again? Nothing. Made. Sense. Savagely, Harry scrubbed at her eyes, her breath faltering as her mind whirled.

Unfortunately, the blonde woman decided that was the perfect time to intervene. All Harry saw was the stiffening of her shoulders, a tensing sort of motion Harry was all too familiar with, the readiness for action, for fighting, her hand going to another weird metal thing at her hip, like a muggle gun but not quite a gun, and her steady step forward. Harry lashed out.

"Stupefy!"

The spell hit her right in the middle of her chest, enough power behind the spell flinging the woman back a foot or two before she unceremoniously crashed into the wall by the side of the large doorway. The man lept into action, hitting his Merlin-damned chest badge again as he darted around her, keeping his back away. Smart man.

" _Security, emergency in sickbay!"_

Then he was falling next to the woman, using that rectangle thing again, sweeping it over her and Harry clocked the doorway. Empty. Freedom. Run. Harry bolted for it, her heart a war-drum in her ears, her breath rapid and cutting. She managed to dive right through the two large plates of metal before they swooshed shut.

Hallways. Narrow, bright, puzzling hallways greeted Harry. She span around, tried to get her bearings, tried to remember anything, but nothing seemed right. Everything was wrong. Everything was strange. Everything was foreign. Yet, she only had but a moment to take in her surroundings before a beam of some kind, hot and red, skimmed her shoulder and crashed into the wall besides her head. She snapped around, saw a man down the hallway, a tall one with broad shoulders and dressed in a strange, beige uniform, holding the same gun-but-not-gun the blonde woman had, this one pointed right at her.

" _Stop right there!"_

These weren't muggles. They couldn't be. She needed to run, she needed to get away, she couldn't stay here, not with these curious beings. Harry fired back a Stupefy, dashing down the hallway, the opposite way to the man with a weapon. Left. Right. Left. Left. Right. Left. Around she went, running, confused, alone. She ran for a lifetime, she ran for a second, she simply ran and ended up nowhere. Finally, she took a sharp right and ran straight into an open, blindingly bright and colourful place. Subsequently, she also ran smack bang into a crowd of people. There was yelling, shouts, people falling over and the noise, the light, everything was too much. Harry's hands clamped down over her ears, her eyes scrunched shut, and still, their foreign words rambled in her head like a brigade of Thestrals.

" _Is that a Cardassian?"_

" _Where are her neck ridges?"_

" _She doesn't look well…"_

" _What's a Cardassian doing on Deep space nine?!"_

" _It's armed!"_

Harry stumbled, nearly loosing her balance as her eyes flickered open and, really, she wished she never woke up. The people around her… They weren't _human._ Some had ridges going down their noses with shiny earrings dangling down from proud lobes. Others had elongated, bold heads, with splodged print shining on their wet looking yellow and blue skin. Others had mouths… Multiple mouths and ridges and spikes and… Merlin, sick… She was going to be sick. _Find Hermione. Find her and everything will be alright. Everything will be fine._

In full panic, Harry pushed away, bulldozing through the crowd, further into the circling shopping or, perhaps, promenade place. The smells of food, spices, perfume, the sight of a rack of clothing and strange statues perched on tables, stood outside little shops, bright, neon lights flashing above, advertising. _Too much. Too much. Too much!_

The people around her stopped, they stared, and they spoke and she couldn't think! Facing her, a door swooped open and a man, followed by another three, stepped out. Beige uniforms, ridged noses, apart from the one in the middle, with those bloody guns already in hand. He, the leader taking point in their little group, looked like a melted ken doll. Skin tight, features smooth, undefined, golden hair slicked back. He spotted her straight away and pointed, and Harry didn't need anymore indication to run for the fucking hills. As she began to sprint away, the middle man shouted.

" _Evacuate the promenade! Everyone, out!"_

The cry created a tide Harry had to swim against as people rushed and careened, dashing around, flooding the opposite way Harry was trying to run. _Away… She needed to get away._ She turned violent, shoving, shouldering and pushing her way through the swarming mass of bodies quickly flooding out of the curving shopping centre. As the people began to whittle down to a few stragglers, those beams of light were shot at her again, forcing her to duck and dodge, and dip from one table, to an indent, to an alcove. Harry had barely managed to dodge the last shots fired when two more beige, nose-ridged guards came tumbling out in front of her, guns high and ready. They were fast, but she was faster, even in her delirious, panic-stricken state. _Run. Run. Run. Run._ It was all she could think.

"Stupefy! Expelliarmus!"

Three more shots blasted out from behind her, forcing her to take a keen left roll, jumping over a short table or open window into a shop. She crashed to the floor, something… A bottle she had swept over, breaking underneath her, stabbing into her side, right through her ribs, tearing. Harry howled as she rolled over on the floor, shakily grabbing the large shard of glass and yanking it free as her wand hand went to press into the weeping wound. She threw the glass shard away from her. Still, she haggled herself into a sitting position, using a shelf beside her to yank herself up, hissing through her teeth as her side throbbed at the jostling movement. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck! What the fuck were those people? Where the hell was she? What in Merlin's name was going on? Oh… Oh… She couldn't breath… Air… Needed… Air…

 _Snap out of it. Look around. Find somewhere to hide or a weapon… Or something, to get you out of this mess!_ That's right. Breath. In. Out. Calm. She needed to get her head straight if she was going to get out of this. Grimacing, Harry pulled her hand away from her wound, feeling blood seep into her shirt, to see how bad the damage was but her hand caught her gaze.

 _Brown._ Her blood… It was brown… Why was it brown? Her hand came up, level to her face, and she saw it. Her skin… Her skin… It was grey… light nimbus cloud grey. Harry's hand dropped back to her stab wound as she leant forward, too alarmed to care much for the twang of pain from her wound to do much distracting, scanning the shelves around her of the little bar she was ducking behind. Bottles surrounded her, but the bar itself was black, polished, reflective. Her arm swept out, knocking the bottles off as she crawled closer, dragging herself forward by her free hand, knuckles white as she gripped her wand, closer to her reflection.

If the thing staring back at her didn't blink when she blinked, turn her head when she did, or lift its hand to skim her face like she did, Harry would call it a stranger. That wasn't her staring back at her. It couldn't be… Could it? No, those were definitely her eyes, as green as lime mixed with shamrock. That was her hair, right down to the last rebellious onyx curl defying gravity to give her a look of having a lion's mane that swung at her hips. That was her shape of eyes and overall, her nose… But everything else was gone. _Wrong._

Scales as grey as her skin were arching over her eyes, replacing her brows, gliding around her socket to line her cheekbone. Ridges sprouted from them, lining upwards, into her hairline, one fractured and split by her lightening bolt scar. In the middle of her forehead was a weird shape, a circle, a spoon of some kind, ridged and half formed, but proudly there, tinted blue in the middle. Little ridges ran down from it, over her nose, thin ones, lining it, glazing down and dipping off into her cupids bow.

More of those damned ridges lined her chin and jawline, blending ear to cheekbone, and those scales came back around her neck, though she had no ridges, on either side, two tinted blue, like the spoon, halfway down. From the thin, too large white shirt of some kind, a combo to her white trouser she had awoken in, a hospital get up Harry would guess, she could see ridges lining her collarbone, thick ones, as well as another spoon, for lack of a better word, proudly jutting out from between her breasts, just above. What was she?

" _Hey, what are you doing in my bar! It's closed, if you couldn't read the sign!"_

Harry's gaze wrenched away, over to the side of her, to the opening of the bar, to the voice. The person was short, extremely so and so very, very orange. His ears were large, bat-like, shooting out from either side of his bold head and his teeth, Merlin, they were sharp little daggers underneath his wrinkled nose. Footsteps rang out behind her, from over the window, and Harry lept at the small being. She had her arm around his neck before he could so much as shout, her wand pressing into his neck before he could call for help and steadily, she backed away from the bar she was hiding behind, eyeing the room she found herself in.

It was definitely a bar, perhaps a restaurant, but none of it mattered. She needed to get away, find a healer, someone, anyone, who could tell her what the hell was going on. Spotting the door to the place, the being in her arms began to protest and mewl, Harry limped over to it, dragging the small being with her, wincing as her side flared up in pain, something moist and thick and hot beginning to run down into the waistband of her trousers.

" _Hey now, no need for that. If you wanted a drink, all you had to do was ask! What do you want? Anything? Free on the house!"_

This door didn't swoosh open when she got close to it like the others. In fact, the thick metal looked like it could take a good beating. Not willing to move her wand away from her hostage, and the only bargaining chip she had should those beings outside fire at her again, should he run for it when her guard was down, Harry yanked him closer to the door, jutting her chin at it. He only blankly stared at her.

"Open it!"

Nothing. Not even a blink. Once again, Harry tried to nod towards the door. Finally he seemed to clock on as he slowly raised his hand, making sure she could see it, as he began to fiddle on a little panel by the door, pressing a series of buttons on a little glass screen. The beep of the door opening was like music to Harry's frayed nerves. Pulling them to the side, Harry peeped around the corner. Fuck.

Melted ken doll, four beige nose-ridged guards and boyish smile man were all waiting outside, ready. She pulled back and tightened her hold onto the orange bat person, who began mewling again. Right. She would walk out, calmly, hold onto her hostage until she found a way out of here and then release him once she was safely gone. Then, she would find Hermione, figure out what had happened and somehow reverse whatever it was that was done to her to make her look like this. No one needed to get hurt. She could do this… If she didn't bleed out by then, that is. Slowly, Harry stepped out of the dark, empty bar, wand still pressing into the neck of the small being she had headlocked and faced the little firing squad that was ready to jump her.

" _Are you okay Quark?"_

The boyish man spoke, leading to the being in her arms to clack back in a different language. Still, they seemed to understand each other, at least. That must have been nice.

" _Do I look okay doctor? I found a bleeding Cardassian in my bar in the middle of the night who keeps hissing at me and jabbing me with a stick! If she tightens her hold anymore, she's going to snap my neck!"_

The man… Doctor, she thought he might have been a doctor, stepped forward and Harry jerked the orange thing closer, wand grinding into the being's neck.

"Don't come any closer. I don't want to hurt anyone. I just want to go home… Home… Do you understand me? Home… I'm just trying to get home."

 _Home_. Was there even a home to go back to? If these beings were in league with deatheaters, then they had won. Hogwarts would be gone. Everything would be gone… No. No. This was different. She just needed to find someone, anyone, familiar. Then everything would make sense. She had to believe that. Melted man went to raise his gun at her but the doctor lifted his hand, holding him off.

" _Don't! She isn't going to hurt him. She's scared and injured, look… She's bleeding. I've ran scans on the people she's hit so far and she's only stunned them. Nothing more. We just have to wait until her universal translator kicks in."_

The doctor turned to another one, one of the nose-ridged ones.

" _Find Garak and bring him here. You should have informed him that she was awake as soon as I comm'd through."_

Harry groaned as the stab wound in her side began to pulsate in gnawing pain, her legs began to shake from the strain of holding herself upright, her eyes stinging from the bright light around her and the bile was back in her throat. Too much. Everything was too much. However, though she couldn't understand him, the doctors voice was light, calm, soft. She could make it. She could find them, Hermione, Ron, Neville, she had to. Then everything would be okay. Everything would be right.

Cautiously, the doctor gestured down to the orange man as the beige guards lowered their weapons. What was it Shacklebolt told her once? Don't fight harder, fight smarter. In her weakened state, growing more dim by the tick of the clock, she had enough strength to perhaps cast two, three more stupefy's, before she blacked out. Not enough to take out everyone surrounding her before she could run for it or not get shot with one of their beams. And that was if she disregarded the possibility that they could do anything more than fire those beams at her. Which, to her, was unlikely. Beings and creatures who could do things like that often had more tricks up their sleeves. She should know. She was a witch after all.

If she couldn't force her way out, perhaps she could reason with them. Show them she wasn't a danger. Give them a solid reason to let her go. Her wand dropped as she pushed the orange being forward, towards his people. It happened all so fast. The orange bat being ran towards the group, the doctor smiled at her and one of the beige guards behind him lifted his gun. Harry swore as the doctor shouted at the same time as the beige guard fired.

" _No!"_

The pop of Harry apparating melded into the pound of her heart and for a split moment, she thought she was dying. When she landed, it was only a few feet away from the confused group, all the distance her dwindling magic could manage, but the suddenness of her rapid disappearance was enough to daze them and her landing spot was just enough out of sight to give her a head start as she stumbled and slid shoulder first into a bronze wall. One breath, two breaths, a hand scrunching into her slash, trying to stem the bleeding and she was staggering blindly away.

" _You had an order not to shoot!"_

Get away. Run. Get away. Run. It was all she could think of. Once or twice, her legs threatened to give out, the wound in her side felt like it was tearing open further, perhaps she had splinched herself after all, but she kept going, bracing her bloody hand against the wall to ground herself, hobbling away. It was all she had left. Soon, or maybe hours later, she couldn't tell any longer, she was falling through a hole in the wall… No, not a hole, a door, crashing to her knees. Clawing into the carpet, heaving herself, she managed to come to a tottering stand, wobbling as she delved deeper into the darkened room.

The smell was nice in here, all soft spice and desert sands. The heat… The glorious heat was pleasant beyond words. The light wasn't too bright either and Harry nearly cried from the respite from the attack on her senses. Her eyes slid shut as she swayed where she stood. It was getting harder to keep them open, to focus, to think… Didn't she have a quidditch match to get to? Or was that the O.W.L finals? There was somewhere she needed to go…

" _Harriet?"_

She came to like a spider being dropped into a puddle, with a hardy jerk and a scramble of limbs to keep herself balanced. Her gaze shot to a doorway, one she hadn't spotted in her sudden ramble into the room, off to the corner, shadowed and hidden by a rack of clothing. It was the first word in this god forsaken place Harry had understood since awakening. The silhouette stepped out from the darkness and Harry faltered into a grinding stop.

He looked just like her. The very same light grey skin, ridges, scales, though his hair was cropped short and straight, combed away from his face, his eyes were a arctic blue and his neck flared out like a cobra's, but everything else was so startingly, achingly familiar. Too familiar for a stranger. Harry's legs gave out as he rushed towards her crumbled form, dropping his cup to the floor with a shatter. She couldn't fight him off, she could hardly lift her arm anymore, as he dropped down to her, pulling her closer, prying her hand away from her side to see the gnarly slash through her ripped and brown blood-soaked shirt. She could feel the vibrations of his sharp intake of breath rather than hear it. In fact, she was having difficulty hearing anything.

Soon, it was his warm hand pressing strongly against her side. Soon, he was easing her against his chest, head propped against shoulder as Harry began to fight for breath. Soon, that void was back, tugging at her, teasing her.

" _Harriet, look at me. Keep focused. I've got you now. You're safe. Safe."_

Harry blinked and tried to breathe in, but it hurt. Everything hurt. Bewilderingly, without meaning to, she found herself echoing him, this familiar stranger.

" _Safe?"_

Something thick and hot dribbled from her lips, down her chin. She thought she saw him nod and smile, press something on his chest, but he was just a mass of foggy colours now that couldn't keep their shape. She did feel him though. She felt the soft rise and fall of his own chest, gently rocking her. She felt the gentle hand stroking her hair, she felt the warmth. She felt _safe._ For the first time since she had awoken, no, before then, before the running and war and horcruxes, before Voldemort, for perhaps the first time in her entire life, all bittersweet sixteen years of it, she felt utterly, completely safe.

" _Garak to Dr. Bashir, medical emergency in my shop. I have Harriet but she's injured. I think she's pierced a lung and is haemorrhaging. Please hurry."_

Sleep. She wanted to sleep. She needed to sleep. Just a nap. A quick… Nap…

" _No. Don't go to sleep. There's no time for that now. Not after all this waiting you've put me through. That's it. Stay with me."_

Her voice was jarring, splintered, broken.

" _Safe."_

He pulled her in tighter, just as a set of footsteps began to get closer.

" _Yes. Safe. You're home now. Home and safe."_

* * *

 **What do you guys think?**

Obviously, things will become clearer the longer we go on in this fic, but while planning it out, I thought this part would be the best for the prologue. Don't worry though, everything gets cleared up… In time ;).

As for the fic itself, it's mainly going to be centred around family, Cardassian culture (Or my interpretation of it, at least), and discovery of oneself. That being said, there will be a smidgeon of romance dusted in, for our simple tailor Garak and dear doctor, as well as Harry, though I haven't decided on her pairing yet. (Suggestions on Harry's pairing are more than welcome!) That being said, romance isn't going to be the main focal point of this fic, though included.


	2. Chapter 2

**CHAPTER ONE: THE STARS**

 **Harry's P.O.V**

Harriet came to slowly this time, like a gentle lullaby, consciousness sang her to awareness. This time, the lighting wasn't blinding. This time, there was welcomed heat to the air. This time, panic didn't drive her into stubborn and thoughtless action. No. Instead, she found herself coming to with a sort of keen resignation. She knew when she opened her eyes, Hogwarts would not be awaiting her. She knew she wouldn't be hearing Hermione's scolding tone or Ron's rye laughter. She wouldn't be smelling fresh damp earth or frost biting in the Scottish winds. For a moment, as her eyes slid open and she stared bottomlessly at the high, bronze ceiling, that loss felt all to heavy to bear.

Yet, she sat up. Steadily, she swerved and she swung her legs over the side of her cot and she stared. The pain in her side was gone, and with only a momentary dizziness that struck her, Harry, overall, was feeling better. Weak, insurmountably weak like a kitten, but well, all things considered. This room was different, she noted. The colours hadn't changed, the strange angles still felt too sharp and the smell wasn't much better, but this one was smaller, more enclosed, with only one little door to gain entrance and exit from. A doorway in which two people stood, waiting, watching.

The boyish doctor was back, fiddling with a contraption, smiling at her as if she wasn't cornered in some room like a lab rat. Next to him stood, well, the man that smelled like desert sands and smoky spices, the one who had rocked her back and forth as she bled out in his arms. Harry, in turn, stared right back, unblinking, unmoving, right into those arctic eyes that refused to leave her own.

"You have your mother's eyes."

His, the man who looked like her as she was now, voice was soothing, like a warm polished rock, heavy but dulcifying. More importantly, this time, she could understand what he was saying and Merlin, it unsettled her so. It took her a while to find her own voice to answer back, and when she did it sounded dry, harsh, unused.

"You knew Petunia?"

Thankfully, he seemed to understand her too as he smiled, just a little twist to his lips as he came to the edge of the doorway, cocking his head at her. It had been a test, of course, one he had seen through straight away by that lilting smile. How did this man, this strange being, know her mother? Harry could feel energy, swarms of it, filtering through the walls, bleeding out, like veins in this damned place, but she could feel no magic. None what-so-ever. So how did he know her mother?

"Her name was Lily. Petunia, if I recall correctly, was your aunt, and we both know that."

He knew her name, he knew her mother, well enough to compare her eyes as many did, and he knew her aunt, at least by name. This sudden familiarity he had, when Harry felt no recollection to him, unnerved her more than any Dementor. Especially when, after the little stunt she had pulled, a proud sort of gleam shone in his eye, as if pleased by her underhanded prodding of the waters around her to see just how much these people knew. Harry's chin jutted out, her shoulders squared back and she did all she could to fight the ugly head of the urge to run raising in her gut.

"What do you want from me?"

He faltered, she saw it. It was quick, a flash, just a twitch in his jaw and a sad sort of downward twist to his eyes, but he faltered.

"I'm afraid the situation is a lot more complicated than any answer I can give to that question."

Harry didn't relent, even if that melancholic type of shadow hooding his eyes twisted something inside of her. She didn't know him. She didn't know anything about him, not even his name. She shouldn't _feel_ anything about this stranger. But she did. Strangely, she did. And it terrified her.

"Then _make_ it less complicated."

She needed someone, anyone, to. This place, what was happening, these people, nothing seemed familiar or right. It felt as if she had been plucked from everything she had ever known and thrown head first into an entirely new world. Muggles with laser beams, strange beings, buildings not like anything she had ever seen before. Right here, right now, up was down and down was around and left was dead and right was sailing somewhere over the bloody rainbow. So, yes. Perhaps her tone had taken on a sort of wounded pleading octave, perhaps her hands were shaking where she let them clench into the edge of the cot and perhaps she was even faltering herself, but Merlin dammit, she was trying to understand just what had happened.

"You have your mother's fiery temper too, I see."

He smiled and Harry snapped, the temper he so fondly spoke of flaring where confusion had only muddled.

"Is that it? You want to know about my mother? Is that why I'm here? Well, she's dead. She's been dead for a long time. You're too late to the game."

The smile dropped from his face, shattering like glass on concrete, and Harry felt a bubble of guilt and remorse simmer in her throat, but she refused to let it out. She clamped it down, locked it away. _Stranger._ He was a stranger. An unknown. And still, his sadness, the hint of it haunting his face, confidently hidden but still so blatant to her own eyes, somehow became her own sadness too. Harry didn't care for that feeling, that muted intimate connection, not one bit.

"I know, otherwise she would be here right now, and for that, I truly am deeply sorry. I should have been there for her and for you."

He really did sound sincere, and Harry, truly, felt her heckles drop just as her gaze drifted away. Her mother had always been a sour topic, a festering sore that people often pocked, even when they didn't mean to, and belatedly, Harry realised this was honestly one of, if not _the_ , first time someone had said they were sorry, regretful, that her mother was gone. Oh, they apologized for James Potter all the time, Sirius would rant and weep over him, Remus would mope for his ghost, but no one ever said they missed Lily, not to Harry, or at least, have their unspoken words tell just that like this man had. Sometimes, in the heat of war, in the dead of the night, it really did seem like only she and Snape ever really thought or remembered her mother and missed her. It was more than a tad confusing to find someone else, a stranger, who felt like they did.

"I don't understand what's going on."

And wasn't that the truth. Harry knew she was arrogant, extremely so in some regards, Snape had been right about that, and still, the admittance that there was something she didn't understand didn't sting as much as she thought it would. This whole ordeal must be humbling her Gryffindor edge, or, perhaps, the scales on her face were making her Slytherin tendencies show. Either way, she wanted… No, needed answers. This man had them, she knew that much. The doctor decided now was his time to intervene.

"You've been through tremendous trauma, even before your accident on the Promenade in which you found Garak. From the medical scans I have ran, you show obvious physical signs of long-term malnutrition, abuse, neurological damage-"

Harry cut him off by lurching from her bed, coming to a lopsided stand. Weak. She felt so fucking weak.

"Stop! Just tell me what you want from me! You think you can just, what? Pin me in here and question me? Oh, don't look so surprised! I can feel the bloody energy you're pumping through this room, encasing it in! You've put me in a jail cell! I don't know who you are, what you want or where you come from, but if you don't lower this-… This-… This shield, I'll blow this entire room, no, this entire building down around us!"

Maybe it had been the none too swift reminder of her cupboard, of the years of Vernon's fists and the Dursley's scathing remarks, or the war and blood, her own scars and nightmares, or perhaps she had truly began to crack because, let's face it, she had been cracking for a long time, but the doctors almost clinical regurgitation of things, in a voice that sounded perpetually happy, speaking of wounds, damage he knew not how she got, made her react so violently. Or maybe she was just feeling trapped and her claustrophobia was kicking in. What did any of it matter? What did any of them know? How did they know her mother? What the hell did they want?

"Harriet-"

The man, Garak, tried to placate her but she was done. _Done_. She charged, as close as the energy blocking the doorway allowed her to, and accusingly jabbed a finger in his direction.

"How do you know my name!? Huh?! How the fuck do you know my name?!"

She wanted Garak to get angry. She wanted him to yell, or scream, or curse and meet fire with fire and still, there was only sadness and understanding in his eyes and it made her feel sick, violated, as if he could and had stripped her of her skin, her masks, and found all her secrets written in the marrow of her bones. _Who was he?_

"Because I chose it."

Harry stepped back and rubbed the heels of her palms harshly over her eyes. The ridges lining her brows caught the soft skin of her palms and her hands dropped as she looked down at the grey skin. She felt sick. What had happened to her? What had they done to her? What had she become? What was happening? So many questions, no answers, only sadness and understanding and she had no clue why that was there, on his face, why it was aimed at her of all people. Her fists clenched, and she scowled at Garak, shaking her head. It was a trick, it had to be. He was playing her.

"No. My father chose my name."

Garak's voice never left that soothing dulcet decadence. There was no anger in his tone. There was no indignation hiding in his words. There was no violence lurking in his vowels. Nothing anything Harry was used to and it felt like another loss, another stab, another grief. Why wasn't he angry? Why wasn't he yelling back at her? There was just sadness and understanding and with four words, it felt like he had slapped her around the face.

"I _am_ your father."

There was a bout of silence, drawn and long, and then laughter, hot, burning, loud laughter as Harry howled.

"Very funny. Do you really expect me to play into your sick little game? My parents are dead. They died fifteen years ago! My fathers name was James Potter. He and my mother met when they were eleven years old and-"

Garak nodded as if he expected her to react just the way she had, before he strolled over to the door, poking at a small panel as the doctor went to hold him back, but it was too late. Harry felt it more than saw it, as the energy swirling around her dropped, dissipated, the shimmer along the door, just a phantom of light telling her that something wasn't quite right there, fading. With no caution or weariness, as if he thought she wouldn't attack him, that the possibility of such an outcome had not even crossed his mind, Garak was stepping through, closer, pulling something out from behind his back and holding it out towards her.

 _Her wand._

"Test it. The _spell_ is quite a simple one, is it not? Familia Revelarius, if I'm not mistaken?"

She didn't miss the way he emphasized the word spell, nor did she miss the obvious implications it had. She stiffened, gaze flickering to her wand and then back to Garak's own steady gaze.

"You know about magic…"

His hand raised, urging her to take her wand.

"Yes, I do know about the abilities your kind call magic. Your mother taught me about it. She was quite the remarkable woman and witch. Go on, do it. See for yourself."

Briefly, her eyes darted to the doctor, who stayed in the hallway, watching, but not intervening, before her eyes trailed back to her wand and subsequently the man holding it. Cautiously, she took it. She wouldn't lie, for a second, she thought about stunning Garak, then the doctor, before she tried to make a second run for it, but, well, look how well that turned out. Furthermore, these people knew her mother, knew her, knew about magic, they had answers she needed.

So, she grasped onto Garak's hand before he could pull it away, aimed her wand at their joined limbs and muttered the spell. She refused to look down, she didn't need to see the gold light take shape and pulse and life. Yet… Yet, as she looked at Garak and grinned, as she was sure, so fucking sure, that seconds from now this madness would stop, that she could somehow show them they had got the wrong person or this had all been a terrible mix-up, blue light shimmered from her peripheral vision. Harry threw the soft, warm hand away from her as if it had scorched her very bones, stumbling back, eyes wide.

"I don't… No… James… How?"

 _Blue._ Blue… It had turned blue… How? Had she done it wrong? No, no light would have come otherwise. Had they tampered with her wand? No, the wand was just a conduit, she was the power source and they couldn't tamper with her magic, she would feel it inside of her, wriggling, alert. Then why the fuck had it turned blue for her paternal line? No. There was a sound logical reason. There had to be. She knew who she was. She knew where she came from. Dammit, she had the scars to prove it!

"Many years ago, when I was young myself, I… Skimmed across a spatial anomaly. The anomaly radioactively spiked my cellular composition with chroniton particles. From there, I experienced temporal fluxes when my REM sleep engaged-"

She bumped into the cot as she back away, and still, she fumbled, skirting backwards, away, trying to push that blue light from her mind. She managed to get the bed between them before Garak could try and follow, and still, it wasn't enough distance.

"Spatial anomaly, chroniton particles, temporal fluxes… You don't make any sense!"

The doctor finally entered the room, although he kept to the edge, almost politely keeping his distance from a quickly unravelling Harry.

"Garak experienced an accident that left him, for lack of a better word, swinging between times when he slept. He would fall asleep in one era, awake in another. Yours, to be exact."

Despite the heat of the room, she became ice cold as realisation set in. She stopped then, all movement, dead, limp, just her heart pounding in her ears as her gaze swung to Garak's and suddenly, like a car crash, his sadness and understanding became bitterly clear to her. The people… The laser beams… The odd style and fashion and exactly how a muggle managed to heal her so fast…

"You time travelled."

She was in the future. How far? She didn't know, but here she was.

"I did. I met your mother. I fell in love, as the young are oft to do, and I watched as she swelled with you despite our races being incompatible."

Garak turned to doctor and all Harry could do was try and keep herself upright in a world that was determined to see her fall.

"Dear doctor, please, can I have some privacy?"

The doctor nodded and left after casting her one last lingering look. That look was sad too and Harry felt like the ground underneath her feet was splitting apart, the void forming beneath her feet threatening to swallow her whole. Garak only started to speak once the doctor was well out of sight.

"I loved your mother. I truly did. But our time was always meant to be short and sweet."

He edged himself towards the only seat in the room, her cot, and sat down, gently patting the side of him in silent invitation for Harry to do the same. She swallowed, she blinked, and she followed and sat because, really, she couldn't think much more passed motor functions.

"The radiation that allowed me to, time travel, as you put it, eventually began to deteriorate in my bloodstream. I went back less and less. I tried to remedy it by tracking the anomaly with a half-formed plan to reradiate myself, but the radiation of the anomaly was only temporary and dissipated before I could follow through with it."

Radiation, anomalies, time travel, she was hearing him, but it wasn't fixing itself inside, it wasn't sticking. She felt fluid, shapeless, streamlined. It was a strange feeling, having your core, something so fundamental that you took it for granted, yanked away from you. It left you freefalling, airborne, unbalanced. She wanted to deny it all. The spell had gone wrong. This was a trick. All liars and crooks and staged games. But every time she went to deny it, to argue and yell and curse, she saw that blue light encasing their hands and her tongue shrivelled in her mouth like a wilted rose.

"The last time I saw your mother was just after she had given birth. I remember her smiling at me, you in her arms. You were so small. So fragile. You barely fit into the crux of my arms… I grew quite close to your mothers' friend, James Potter. He was overly cheerful, disdainfully friendly and naively trusting, but he was a good man. We knew if people discovered that you were… Different, like me, then nothing good would come. James was brilliant at biological manipulation. I believe he called it-"

"Transfiguration. You biologically transfigured me. You hid what I was. You passed me off as James Potters child. You made me into a lie."

The words from her memories, they made a disturbing amount of sense now. Her voice wasn't accusatory, nor was it argumentative, it was simply just that, a voice, hallow and as shapeless as she felt. In hindsight of things, when had her life not been a lie? When she was younger, her parents had been good-for-nothings that died in a car crash. Sirius had sold out her parents. Voldemort was dead and gone and Harry could live a long and happy life. Lies. They had all been lies fed to her.

Her parents had died fighting a war, Sirius had been innocent, Voldemort had hunted, tortured and tried to kill her, and she… She had been a Horcrux, born and raised to die at the right time. What did one more lie on top of the others really matter to her? Too much when that lie stripped her of the one thing she had left, her bloody name.

"We tried to protect you. There was a war, was there not, between your people? Lily was scared for you. She wanted you away from there. _I_ wanted you away from it. We planned for me to try and take you away with me when I faded back, but it wouldn't work. We figured out that if we found the anomalies entrance, that the radiation would be like a gateway, allowing us to pass through from one end to another. We were correct. However, the anomaly that placed me in that time only opened every sixteen and a half years on Lily's end and every fifty on mine, and only stayed open for a month. We, unfortunately, lost the first chance to take you back with me when we arrived at the entrance to late. By then, my radiation had dipped so low that I was forced back. Alone."

Harry's chuckle was a horrid thing, all cracked leaves and smashed porcelain as her head lolled back and she looked up to the ceiling, letting the words ghost out her mouth like her very soul was being sucked from her.

"But there was another chance. Sixteen years later, fifty for you. James Potter made sure the biological transfiguration would only last for sixteen years. When I started to change back, the healers would be confused. They would be in a rush, looking for answers, thinking I was diseased. He manufactured for me reverting back to look like I was dying. But how-"

"Madam Pomfrey was also a good friend of ours."

Her head sagged back down as her eyes crunched shut, fighting back the tears that wanted to fall. She hadn't cried when she walked to her death, in what only seemed like a few days ago, and she wouldn't cry now.

"She's the one to suggest that I was to be put into a stasis chamber, wasn't she? Then it was just about getting me through the anomaly, the gate, so to speak… Why did I need a stasis pod?"

Finally, she looked at Garak, really looked at him, from his scales to his ridges to his strange skin, an action she had been fighting against and then it hit her. It really hit her. The situation, the conclusion. She sucked in a sharp breath.

"You're not just another creature, are you? This… This isn't England. This isn't even Europe, is it? How far into the future am I?"

She couldn't bring herself to think of the word that began with an A, she couldn't bring herself to even consider the possibility. Not fully.

"You needed the stasis Pod because the anomaly was not stable. It also kept you alive and safe when you were in space, adrift. I recovered your pod three months ago, which had drifted three light years away from where you were meant to be, but I've been waiting for your arrival for over fifty-two years. A few months of searching seemed inconsequential."

Time travel. Space… _Aliens._ Her head swam and throat felt dry and swollen. If the anomaly opened every fifty years here, on this end, then she had been in space… actual Space, asleep, in stasis, for two years. Two whole fucking years. Lily, James, Madam Pomfrey, they knew, they all knew… How many more people knew and kept her in the dark?

"I sort of hate you right now."

And she did. They, James, Pomfrey, Lily, this strange man called Garak, they had stripped her choices from her. Forced her onto this road. They knew what was to come and never once thought to ask her whether she wanted to go through with it or not. Then again, when had that been any different? She had no choice but to fight Voldemort, she had no choice in dying, and here, she had no choice again. Truth and free will weren't often given. She knew that. And still, he gave her that kind smile in return for her anger.

"I understand. However, I do not, nor will I, regret any decision or action I have taken to bring you here."

It was strange. To protect her, to bring her here, he had been willing to take her hatred. In fact, he had been expecting it. He was willing to give something up for the betterment of her. This was a novelty feeling. Normally, she was the one sacrificing.

"We found these in your pod, alongside your bag."

Garak delved a hand into his pocket and pulled out a little stack of parchment, handing them over. Harry took them and ran a finger across the cursive writing she knew so well. Ron and Hermione. They were letters from her dearest friends. The bag. These letters. _They had known too_. Perhaps Pomfrey had told them. Perhaps Hermione, with that brilliant brain of hers, had figured it all out, and still, they had sent her through the anomaly. Why would they send her away? Why would they do this? There was still so much to do back there. Deatheaters needed rounding up, Hogwarts needed to be rebuilt, the ministry needed investigating and-… Perhaps that is exactly why. Perhaps they had known she wouldn't rest, couldn't, when she thought there was work to be done. Perhaps they had given her a chance she had always dreamed of, a chance at a family, a real family, that they knew she wouldn't take if she thought it would cause harm.

"What if I wanted to go back? What if I said I didn't want to be here?"

Harry had to know, she had to, she needed to know whether, here, her choices would matter for something. If push came to shove, would this man, Garak, her fath-… Would he let her decide? Even if it went against what he wanted?

"Then, in fifty years, when the anomaly reforms, I will send you back. It will be sixteen years after you left originally, but I'm sure you'd find your way. You'll be just about old enough to start living your own life about then."

And he would. He really would. She could see it in his eyes, the slope of his mouth, it hurt him to say it but if it was truly what she wanted, he would let her go. No one had ever given that to her before. No one had ever put what she wanted above what they thought they needed from her. A tear did fall this time, catching on the ridge of her cheekbone, and for the first time, she smiled back.

"Just about? I'll be an old woman of nearly seventy."

It was a poor joke, for sure, but it told him what she couldn't bring herself to say. He reached out then, placed his hand over hers, pulled it away from the letters she was holding, to which she dropped beside her, gently and squeezed. Harry squeezed back.

"Cardassians are renowned for their protective instinct when it comes to their offspring and we do have considerable life-spans. I doubt you'll get away from me much before you turn eighty."

Harry's gaze flickered towards the empty door.

"Cardassian… That's what they, the people outside, kept calling me."

Garak nodded.

"It's what we are, the name of our race, what other aliens call us."

Aliens. It was one thing thinking it herself and an entirely other experience having someone external establish it. Garak pulled her hand closer and, in an odd event that felt too natural, leaned his head across and bumped his forehead spoon against her own. It felt intimate, but tender, like how Harry used to picture how getting tucked into bed and her forehead kissed by a loving parent before sleep felt like when she was locked in her cupboard.

"I know this is difficult to digest. I know decisions were taken that you had no say in. I know you've lived a rather… Colourful life up until this point. I know this will take time. But that is all I am asking for. Time. Just a chance to show you the father I've been waiting fifty years to be."

He was pulling away then, detaching, standing from the bed, but he looked back at her from over his shoulder.

"Let me show you something."

He offered her his elbow and, still, Harry hesitated for a moment before she took it. Slowly, her legs still feeling weak, he led her out of the room, down a hallway and into a large area which Harry guessed was the entrance lobby to this healing ward. This room was colder than the one before, leading Harry to believe they had upped the temperature in the other for her comfort. The doctor was there, sitting at a large desk of some kind with screens and flashes of colours beeping out, waiting. His grin was almost blinding when he spotted Harry trailing slightly behind Garak, arm laced through his as she made tottering steps forward. Eventually, Garak's arm slipped away from hers as he went to a far wall by the side, eyeing something Harry couldn't see from her vantage point. He nodded her over.

"Come, have a look."

Slowly, casting a glance to the doctor as she passed, Harry made her way to Garak, before she followed his sight and looked out and found a circular window. Her breath caught in her throat. Blackness, as far as the eye could see, greeted her, but there, in that hallowed pool of ink was subtle little lights, glimmering like diamonds of a thousand dreams. There were so many colours in those little lights, blue, yellow, red, pink, there, shining and dancing in the vastness of space. It was like she was truly seeing the stars for the first time.

"It's beautiful…"

She whispered as she pressed in closer, her hands coming up to the cold material of the window, too warm to be glass, palms flexing as if she could reach out and touch the sea of lights before her. She laughed, loudly, almost hysterically as she looked over her shoulder, to the doctor.

"Do you see this?"

Both he and Garak chuckled at her incredulous tone but Harry was already turning back to the view, transfixed. So many stars, so many worlds, and she was there, floating amongst them. It put things into perspective. Garak's finger invaded her vision, pointing as he leant in closer.

"That one there, the bright red one, do you see it? That's called Farianne VI."

VI? Where there five more? How many of these stars had names? How many had planets? Aliens were real… How many were there? What kinds? Her world had crumbled before her, but here, seeing these stars, a whole knew one was opening up right before her very eyes.

"What about that one, the pulsating blue one?"

Harry asked, perhaps a bit too eagerly, as she pointed at it. Garak chuckled and it was soft and soothing and most importantly, kind. His hand came up to her shoulder, landing, heating the skin that was beginning to get chilly from the thin clothes she was wearing and the overall coldness of this room.

"That one, I believe, is called Verik III. The Denobulans have a rather interesting tale about that star. They believe that-"

And that's how she was lost to tales of stars and aliens and vast worlds unexplored. And, if but for a brief moment, a little bubble of respite, she didn't feel grief or absence, she didn't feel like she had lost anything, only gained.

* * *

 **Do we like it so far?**


	3. Chapter 3

**Harry's P.O.V**

Harry stared at her reflection in the mirror until her sight blurred, until the lines became malleable, soft, smears of colour and then, only then, for just a moment, she could pretend nothing had changed. In this in-between world of blotches and blemishes, She could dream she was back in the Gryffindor common room, readying for her seventh year, cheerful voices mutedly whispering behind her. However, she would blink eventually, she had to, even though she now could hold out longer with her nictitating membrane, and then the reality of her situation would come crashing down upon her like a Troll's club. Almost viciously, she would zero in on the scales on her face,the ridges running up to her hairline, the grey sheen of her skin, the blue tinged cylindrical mount on her forehead and chest, the chatter she imagined would cease and silence would strangle her. Then, in a crushing flash of unflappable reality, she felt so absolutely, defeatedly… _alien._

Alien in the strange room. Alien in this bizarre time. Alien in this bewildering body of hers. Don't get her wrong, she wasn't dissociating, she knew the person in the mirror was, in fact, herself. She knew she had time travelled. She knew this was the room above Garak's tailor shop… Her room, to be precise. She knew all this, every bit of it, and still, painfully, she felt dislodged. _Stranded._

Change normally happened slowly. Step by step, it would creep and alter without anybody the wiser. A grey hair here, a crows feet there, a new house after months of planning, a job you had trained months for. For her, now, it had simply ripped the veil of her life to shreds and dumped her into the deep-end within the beat of a heart. One moment, she was Harry Potter, simple orphan, skinny with a penchant for finding trouble. Now, she was something other. Harry but not quite. Orphan no more. It felt like someone had maliciously flipped her world on its head and left her to scramble for purchase before she fell into a void of nothingness. Nonetheless, the doctor, Bashir he had introduced himself as, said it would take time to acclimatize herself and really, to take things day by day, task by task, thought by errant thought. That was easier said than done.

She had only been released from med-bay four days ago. _Four days_. Bloody hell, it felt like a life-time to Harry. A life-time of examinations, physicals, endless blood-tests and, yes, she shuddered… Vaccinations from a device they called a hypo-spray. Whatever it was, it stung like a bitch and that shot Bashir gave her to stop her contracting Bajoran flu had made her nose, ears and eyes bleed until Bashir had rushed to give her an anti-dote after a brief frantic period of surprise at her reaction to the normally harmless vaccine.

Furthermore, her body was still dealing with the transfiguration reversion, as well as her two-year stint in stasis and so, she had spent most of her time, when not being pricked or prodded, sleeping. Sleep was a welcomed respite from this chaotic place. It was still too bright, everything was too noisy and until Garak had given her a portable heater to carry around, explaining that young Cardassians needed warmth more than when they aged and in comparative terms, she was relatively a _baby_ , everything had been frigidly biting. Still, as much as she had to complain about, she had things to be thankful for.

In truth, she didn't think she would have made it through this mess, both mental and physical, without either Doctor Bashir or Garak… Her father. Merlin, she was still coming to terms with that. Bashir gently pried her away from her darkening thoughts, when the loss of her other life became too much some nights, with his easy banter, his long winded, good-natured rants that for a brief spell, made her forget there was anything but the present, no unknown future or lost past. Bashir made it easy to smile, to live in the now, to breath calmly. It was the little things he did that meant the most. A cup of earl grey in the morning, a Garibaldi biscuit before lunch, the sound of ACDC humming out from a… Thing they called a Padd. They were things Harry knew, things from her home, her time, pieces of comfort and familiarity that brought her a soothing sense of not feeling so lost and adrift. While Bashir made her feel relaxed in the here and now, Garak slowly opened the doors to the wide, wide, wide world she was now in.

Garak lured her into the future by her incessant curiosity. He would come in the morning, just before she awoke, carrying a tray balancing a plethora of odd foods and drinks, the delicious smells tempting her from slumber. They would be pilled in large bowls, elongated plates and sharing boards. He would place it on her bed, right on top of her lap, and wait. After a while of Harry staring confusedly at the display, Garak had explained it was customary for Cardassian families to share their meals, both in sitting and in tableware. Bowls, spoons; Cadassians didn't use forks or knives, dishes, it was all piled together in one mass for them to pick apart together, often, they simply used their fingers and, as Garak had goaded her into, it was habitual for the youngest to begin to eat first, and consequently, he couldn't eat until she did. Apparently, she found out quickly, her renowned sweet tooth was actually a Cardassian trait, as they too, preferred the honeyed side of things. K'aatch was one of her speedily uncovered favourites. An odd dish, something like a mix of stew and cheesecake. Tespar eggs were nice, jellied things that had a heated kick to them. Garak always made sure to bring her extra of them, along with some Feyt spread she would dip them into.

Sometimes, at night, before sleep could sweep Harry under, he would read to her. Epic poems, tales, sloping novella's from Cardassia. Honestly, she didn't like them. Everybody was normally guilty, died or repeated the same cycle over and over again, so much so that it gave Harry a ominous feeling about her own life, but she did enjoy his soft voice, coaxing her to sleep. He would show her images on the Padd, great buildings of bronze and sandstone, pointed and powerful against the horizon that had three suns. He called it their home _,_ this Cardassia, and with each new image of this strange planet Garak showed her, the more questions she found bubbling out of her lips. _How far away is it? How warm? Is the sand as golden as it looks?_ But then that would lead to more questions, questions she dared not speak and then the pain would come. _What would Hermione think of this place? I wonder if Ron would turn to dust with so much sun? Dobby would have loved playing in that sand…_ From another room, the store front, she heard Garak call for her.

"Dear, the good doctor is here to see you for your daily check-up!"

For the rest of the week, Harry would need daily check-ups to make sure her immune system, with all the vaccinations she had been pumped full for the endless alien diseases and virus, was working properly. Pulling away from the mirror at the gentle call, blinking rapidly, her eyes stinging a smidgen, Harry's gaze trailed to the clothes carefully laid out on the bed before her. Garak, who said he was a tailor, though Bashir had given him the side-eye for that jolly remark, had obviously made them. They were soft looking things, comfy but elegant. The trousers were dark crimson, thick but soft looking, gleaming silk that rippled like water, bordered in decadent gold. The top was a smoky crimson too, long, high collared, bordered in the same golden thread lovingly stitched in sophisticated and intricate borders around neck, cuff and hem. Merlin knew how Garak had figured out her favourite colours, red and gold, but that man seemed to know that she needed to sneeze before even her nose began to tickle.

Harry glanced down to the hospital jumpsuit she was currently wearing, dull and washed out, pulling away from the bed. It felt wrong somehow, putting those clothes on, as if when she adorned those silks, she would be fully turning her back on Hogwarts, on Hermione and Ron, on everything she ever knew. Harry knew it was silly, ridiculous even, but she couldn't help it. It didn't help that still, placed besides the clothes, were two little letters, from Hermione and Ron, letters she still couldn't bring herself to read for fear of what would be told in them. Stiffening her spine, Harry turned her back on it all, picked up the space heater from leaning against the wall, a little rod that glowed a soft orange light, and slipped out of the room, jumping slightly as the door automatically opened, another oddity she was still getting used to, and trailed her way into Garak's store front.

"Coming!"

She shouted back as she finally turned the corner from the hallway and slinked into the store. It was a nice shop, wide, open, painfully bright due to Garak's non-Cardassian customers, colder too, as Harry tightened her arms around the heating rod that gave out a cosy 56.7 C. As she stumbled into the room, still groggy from her long sleep, a full fifteen hours, Harry was already mumbling through the answers she knew Bashir would be requesting from her.

"Mornin' Doc. Before you ask, no, I haven't had any fevers, sniffles or rashes appear. Yes, I am tired. No, I don't feel dizzy or sick and yes, I know what to do if my heartbeat begins to pattern itself into three beats per-"

Harry cut herself off as she spotted the doctor standing with Garak by the sowing table. They weren't alone. In front of them was a man, large, broad shouldered, intimidatingly tall. There was something there, in the sleekness of his eye, the curl of his lip, the lone dimple, that Harry felt was achingly familiar. The three smiled at her as Bashir piped up.

"Ah, Harry, it's good to see you up and about! I brought along a guest whose been wishing to meet you. Harry, this is Commander Benjamin Sisko, head of operations here at Deep Space Nine, and Commander Sisko, this is Harriet-"

His voice was deep, familiarly proud and almost deafening as he deftly cut across Bashir, stepping closer to her, smile flashing brightly.

"Harriet Potter, also known as the chosen one and the girl-who-lived."

Harry shuffled in her spot just past the door to the back rooms, hardening at the moniker.

"You know who I am."

Silently, Sisko waved his hand at the sowing table, towards the chairs, offering her a seat as he took one himself, Garak and Bashir following suit. Harry hesitated, half planning to turn around and dip out. Nothing good ever came when someone offered you a seat before they began talking passed pleasantries. Still, she was a Gryffindor and so, tightening her hold on the heating rod, until the scales on her knuckles bled white, Harry marched forward and took the seat opposite the three. For a moment, she felt like she was facing a bloody tribunal.

"Your life, I'm afraid, is public knowledge. We are taught about you, and your kind, since elementary school. Witches and wizards are what you named yourself, correct? We call you wielders now. Human's capable of atomic manipulation."

Confusion pulled her brows down tight over her eyes. Or, well, now, scaled ridges. Her brows were gone, weren't they? Just like butterbeer and goblins and-… Harry valiantly shook of the morose thoughts. Not now and not with witnesses. However, if muggles were being taught about them, even four, five hundred years into the future, it meant the statute of secrecy had been dismantled. That had to be a good thing, didn't it? Sisko, with his loud voice and kind eyes, took pity on her befuddled silence.

"We'll talk while the doctor runs his tests, yes?"

Harry nodded as Bashir pulled out his scanner, edging around the table to come to hover over her shoulder, sweeping the damned thing up and down her form as it beeped at him and he hummed and tutted back. Harry's gaze never, not once, left Sisko's.

"This isn't just a little chat, is it?"

Harry had never been one to beat around the bush, she found no point in it. Especially now, given the circumstances. Why else, apart from bad news, would the Commander of this very station know exactly who she was, and worse, come to speak to her personally? Additionally, Why they hell were kids being taught about a nobody, arguably an upstart, like her? Yes. Nothing good was coming from this conversation.

"I'm afraid not."

Sisko said and he did, he really did, sound sorrowful. There was only one reason Harry could guess that he would come and talk to her. _Her people._ Witches and Wizards. Wielders. Swallowing, her jaw unbiddenly clenched. After calming her heart, she pushed on.

"What happened to them?"

Was she ready to know? Did she really want to? She couldn't even bring herself to read Hermione or Ron's letters, not yet, she still felt raw and sore and left asunder in a raging ocean of the unknown and unfamiliar. If she knew, it made all this, the time travel, the change, real. Irreversible. Concrete. If she knew what happened to Ron and Hermione, she could no longer pretend they were still sixteen, had not lived on without her, they were still laughing in Hogwarts and-… She was a coward. Look at all they had done for her? Risking their lives during the war, having her back no matter how moody, snappish or downright visceral she was? Dammit, even this, sending her here, to her father just so she could have a chance at having a family? It was time she faced reality and dug her head out of the sand. Sisko cleared his throat before he began to speak, voice low and gloomy.

"A few years after your own war drew to a close, earth faced a rather crippling conflict. Muggles, as you called your fellow man without your… Let's say, abilities, began to dabble with genetics in search for the perfect human. They believed they created such a thing, but the augments, these genetically engineered beings, thought themselves superior and rebelled against their creators. We call this the eugenics war."

Superiority of genes… Harry gave, unwittingly, a brittle chuckle. Was there any war not based on such a stupid, stupid ideology? Had no one learned over the thousands and thousands of years of their history? Sisko carried on.

"When the eugenics war broke out in full swing, the Wielders were only just beginning to heal from their own civil dispute, the very war you put an end to. Their, your, numbers and government were shaky, at best. However, seeing their fellow man in strife, they came out of hiding to aide us in the war. It proved to be a terrible mistake for them. The augments hit them hard and hit them fast and by the end of the eugenics war, they were nearly decimated to extinction."

Harry's heart thundered in her chest.

"That doesn't make sense… The statute of secrecy was thousands of years old. The wizarding world had seen numerous muggle wars come and go, so why would they out themselves then?"

It wasn't that she wanted them to leave the muggles to die, on the contrary, that had been the very reason she had been fighting for in her own war, when it was boiled down to the bone of the issue, to show the wizarding world that muggles and they were equal. Pureblood, muggle, half-blood, muggleborn, they were just labels, nothing more. Nonetheless, oddly, she never actually thought they would come to that conclusion, not so soon. Then, as Sisko answered, Harry's heart broke.

"Because they believed a young individual, a child really, had died during their own war to show them that muggles and wielders were not different, none were superior to the other, that they were equal. Brothers. _You._ You showed them that."

Harry's gut sank as her throat closed and her breath faltered.

"They outed themselves because of me… They died because of me… They're gone because of me…"

Sick, she felt so sick, but Sisko reached over the table and held onto her hand laying limply on the cold metal and smiled at her. Focusing on his face was the only thing stopping Harry from vomiting or passing out.

"No. When the Eugenics war was over, there was a lot of death, yes, but they _survived._ Like the homosapiens and the neanderthal, they ended up breeding into our populace. Of course, this ended up watering down their own genomes and neuro-pathways so much so that, eventually, led to the death of their own distinct abilities. Now, there's nothing left of them. But they lived. They had families. Their descendants are here, today, and not one of them ever regretted aiding the muggles."

His hand squeezed hers before he pulled away and Harry tried to focus on his voice, exactly what he was saying, and, more importantly, what he _wasn't_ saying.

"They passed down their legacy, their stories, their culture, to their descendants, even when they began to show no sign of atomic manipulation abilities. It became a right of passage, to receive the wand from your ancestral line. I believe they didn't want to be forgotten. Not completely, and not by their own families."

Sisko knew her name. He knew about wands. He knew about their own war.

"You're descended from one, aren't you?"

Sisko nodded smoothly.

"A long-ago ancestor, yes. After the wielders came out, after the eugenics war, the wielders signed a treaty with humans. You were a revered figurehead to the wielders by this point, and rumours began to circulate that you were not dead, but simply hidden in a chamber of some-sort. Most of the treaty is redundant now, but a female by the name of Hermione Granger made it a stipulation that, should humans discover your pod, it should be returned to her, or given the circumstances, to one of her descendants to follow through with giving the pod to a specific individual who was only ever named in the journals that she would leave to her children, and them theirs."

 _Garak._ Hermione had made it law that should her stasis pod be lost, if a human ever came across it, they would hand it over to her father. For hundreds of years, Hermione had still been looking out for her. Harry bit the inside of her cheek until there was a slight pop and the horrid taste of copper tingled on her taste-buds.

"All I know is Hermione never gave up on getting you to where you were supposed to go, and so, prepped her descendants as much as was possible should they be the ones to uncover you. It's why Garak came to me to retrieve your pod. Why I know so much. Hermione Granger was my so many great grandmothers on my father's side."

The familiarity… That was Hermione's feline eye shape, her smile, her lone dimple. Harry knew she knew those features! Harry was nearly choking as she spoke.

"Hermione… Did she have a good life?"

Sisko's answering smile was blinding and for the first time since awakening in that frenzied dash through the promenade, Harry could think of her friends without feeling grief.

"She became a decorated ambassador between our peoples. She married a Kingsley Shacklebolt, had seven children who she loved dearly and who loved her equally as much, and lived to the ripe old age of two-hundred and twenty-seven, where she died in her sleep, surrounded by those she loved and who loved her. You know, we are still close to the Weasley's. I grew up with a Ron Weasley myself."

Now that Harry had asked, finally, she couldn't stop the flood.

"And my Ron, did he survive the Eugenics war?"

"He did. He became a relief worker. He travelled from country to country trying to re-build and aid as much as he could. I am told, through Hermione's journals, that he met a Luna Lovegood in Africa upon one such exertion, fell in love, and married her. They had three children. He died when he was fifty-four, after rescuing some children trapped in a collapsing building. Hermione wrote that he died the way he had lived and doing what he loved and you, should any of her descendants ever speak to you, should tell you that you should be proud, for he was."

Harry licked her parched lips.

"I-… Can I read them? The Journals?"

With the conversation ending, Sisko stood from his chair, pulling on his service jumper to straighten out the already pristine lines. Yeah, he was as tall as Shacklebolt too.

"Anytime, Miss Potter. However, Hermione did leave one last message to be passed to you, written the day before she passed."

Then he reached behind him, into a pocket, pulled out a slip of paper and pushed it over the table towards her.

"She said don't grieve for the past and forget to live. Be happy, live, laugh and love. For they had."

Harry gingerly took it, tears misting her eyes as she saw her aged friends faces staring back at her from the photo. Ron and Hermione were older, in their forties, happy, with Luna and Shacklebolt, children weaving in and out of their legs, two new-borns perched on Luna and Hermione's hip. Strung up between them was a banner, paint looking wet and drippy, red clashing against gold. It read only three words, but they were enough.

 _Good Luck Harry!_

* * *

 **Garak's P.O.V**

Garak sighed as he tried to focus his mind on the orders in front of him, but he was having no such luck. Sisko and Bashir had left two hours ago as Harry, under Bashir's diligent orders, had been ordered to rest and sleep after the news of her people had been rather ungracefully, if he said so himself, dropped on her.

However, that was what Harry had been doing for the last week since her second awakening. Sleeping. Bashir assured him it was normal, that he suspected she could have been suffering from what the humans called _depression,_ and they shouldn't prod her but give her space to adapt herself to this new time and place. But Garak was growing weary, perhaps because Cardassians didn't suffer from this malady known as depression, not in the human sense, and really, he didn't know how to help and was feeling rather useless. A feeling he was quickly coming to acquaintance with since his exile to Terok Nor.

At the thought of his exile, Garak's thoughts turned darker. Of course, he and Commander Sisko had been having… Ardent talks, let's call it, over the last two weeks, since recovering Harriet's pod. With his father, Enabran Tain dead, Garak had no fear of his unwanted forced initiation into Harriet's life, and with the bitter defeat of the Obsidian order, they too would pose no threat, but the same could not be said for Cardassia itself. Garak knew, given time, news would reach back to Cardassia of Harriet. That was not what troubled him so. Him having a daughter would be create no big slight or wave in their home-world. However, said daughter having the abilities Harriet had, would, definitely, cause a conundrum for Central Command.

They, of course, would see opportunity. With Cardassia in bed with the Dominion, the two would see a powerful weapon where a child stood. _His child._ Under Cardassian law, due to his exile, Garak had been stripped of all parental, citizen and sanctuary rights. In short, in the eyes of Central Command, Harriet was now a child of state and therefore, under their guardianship. When Central Command got whiff of his daughter and her unique abilities, they would demand Starfleet and Deep Space Nine to extradite her back to her home world, so she could be placed in their care as was their ways. In the eyes of intergalactic and Cardassian Law, she would have to go, and there would have been nothing Garak could have done to stop it. However, the important tid-bit of information here was _would have_.

Garak would not lie, he could have simply extracted Harriet's stasis pod himself, leaving Sisko and therefore Starfleet, completely unaware of her retrieval. The fact that he _had_ involved them, at least on the most minuscule level, spoke loudly. By informing them, he had, in fact, initiated Terran law. Written in their own treaty with the Wielders before their untimely demise and slow absorbtion into the Terran genetics, guardianship over Harriet had been given to Hermione Granger's decedents, or more aptly, Benjamin Sisko, should she be found. That guardianship would only end once Sisko signed it over to Garak, an act he had stopped the man from doing.

After coming to an understanding of Cardassian law in this familial matter, and where that left Harriet, Sisko had quickly agreed to stall signing guardianship over. With Sisko as guardian, when Central Command, for they will, Garak had no doubt in that, petitioned for Harriet's extradition, Starfleet now had grounds for denial of the request due to Sisko's status. Of course, for Sisko's status as guardian to withstand, Harriet would now have to stay, permanently, on Deep Space Nine, but Garak had no current plans of leaving the station prematurely either way. Oh, how Garak was going to enjoy imagining their faces when Starfleet denied them… Still, surely, when the legal route ran dry, Central Command would divert to more covert methods. It was this that caused him worry.

Garak, out of anyone on this station, knew what Central Command was capable of, and now that they had the backing of the Dominion through Dukat's duplicitous and despicable nature, their hand could reach further. A hand that could yank the very daughter he had been waiting fifty years for right from his grasp. No, no, no, that simply wouldn't do…

Before his mind could delve deeper into the inky void of schemes and plot and shadowed hands, the sound of a door swooshing open tickled his sensitive hearing. Gently placing down the Andorian cotton cutting beam, Garak turned around, thinking perhaps that the delightful doctor had decided to, in fact, have afternoon tea with him and Harriet. The store front was empty. However, from the shaded back rooms, out stepped Harriet.

Gone was that dreadful med-bay garb, replaced by the trouser and tunic duo he had carefully and methodically constructed, little flat boots, of the same ruby shade, encasing her feet. Her boisterous onyx hair, contrarily curly in opposition to a Cardassians normally straight locks, had been brushed and combed, braided into a thick rope that swung at her hips. The scales on her face, jaw and neck had been polished, gleaming elegantly in the stores lighting. Yet, most heartrendingly, especially to Garak, was the smile. Wide, toothy, bright and warm. It was such an honest thing, alive, and really, the first true smile he had seen on Harriet's face.

"Do I look alright?"

She asked as she held her arms up and shrugged and it was then that Garak saw it. A little crease by her mouth, tight and straining, and he knew, this was more than a change of clothes. This was Harry's acceptance of who and what she was, where she was now, her silent but valiant offer of giving this life, this world… _Him,_ a chance. Oh, she had been trying before, he knew that, but even Bashir could see there had been something holding her back, shutting her off, closing the door. Now he understood. She hadn't been able to let go of the past, to move forward, not even a step, without the knowledge of her friends' futures. She had her mother's heart. Big and compassionate and so utterly, permanently stubborn. At the image of Lily, forever imprinted on the back of his eyelids, smiling and laughing, his heart gave a sharp twist. Gradually, Garak made his way over to her, placed soft hands on her shoulders and grinned down at her open but hesitant face.

"You look absolutely radiant, my dear."

Just like his Lily did. Lightly, he bent down and bumped his K'af-ca, or as Harry called it, forehead spoon, against her own K'af-ca in an intimate display of affection and comfort. Harry nudged back before the two pulled apart. The hesitance in her face long gone, swept away, only leaving a sunbeam smile.

"I thought we could go out to eat tonight. You said something about a raptor-cap, yesterday?"

Garak chuckled.

"Replimat, yes. Are you sure? We could always use the replicator in our private rooms?"

Harry was already excitedly edging towards the door that led out to the promenade.

"I can't-… I don't want to hide away forever. There's too much to see and do."

Garak's grin grew as he offered her his arm, as was customary for a child to hold as they walked with their parents.

"Then your wish is my command."

Harry threaded her arm through his, sinking into his side, soaking in the extra heat his body offered, an instinctual act done by nearly all young Cardassians, as they strolled towards the door.

"You know, we should invite the doctor to join us."

His gaze darted to hers just in time to see the mischievous glint dash away as she resolutely looked ahead, pretending she hadn't been watching him from the corner of her eyes. Garak hummed conspiratorially.

"Oh, really? Now why would we go and do that?"

Harry chuckled, and it was so very much like his own. Deep, keen and gleefully impish. For one disheartening moment, as they made their way onto the promenade, into the throng of people ebbing back and forth and she answered back, Garak realised that, yes, she had her mother's kind heart, but unfortunately, expressly for him, she had both his observation skills and penchant for mental games.

"Why indeed?"

Perhaps he didn't need to worry _about_ the Dominion, but _for_ the Dominion.

* * *

 **NEXT CHAPTER:** _First impressions of Harry from Sisko, Julian, Worf, Kira, Odo, Quark and Ziyal and a special guest as a Dominion representative comes to DS9 for a non-aggression pact with Bajor…_

To be honest, this chapter is way, way off my normal writing. In style, representation of the characters and execution. It was a bitch to get out and I am extremely sorry about the long wait. However, as shoddy as it is, here it is and I hope you got some enjoyment out of at least one or two sentences lmao. In short, I really just wanted this out the way, to give Harry some closure on the wizarding world, so we can get into the juicy bit of Harry adapting to the DS9 world, establish herself in it and get stuck in with the plot. I.e, here comes the good stuff!

 **As for Harriet's pairing in this, I've whittled it down to four pairings;**

 **Weyoun** : Because I adore Weyoun. Every single clone of him. It would also be really interesting to explore Vorta culture, societal structures and the like as we simultaneously dip into Cardassian life. I already have so many head-cannons for this pairing it's unbelievable lmao. Plus, with Harry's magic, transfiguration and, when the time comes, Animagus, I see some interesting shit going down between the Founders, the Dominion and Harry when they realise there's a solid out their who can, in her own ways, do what the Founders can.

 **Andorian OC** : I like this idea because it's polar opposites and, come one, who doesn't love an angry, blunt little Andorian always up for a fight? I also think, on the social spectrum of the aliens in Star-Trek, Harry falls precariously close to the Andorian side rather than, well, the Vulcan.

 **Damar** : Damar did not deserve the ending he got. Fight me on it. Additionally, I think, especially later on, he and Harry will click, particularly when he fights back against the Dominion occupation of Cardassia.

 **Mekor (Dukat's son)** : Of course, Mekor's age will have to be upped a little, as we never officially meet him in canon, and I can't remember how old Dukat said he was, but this is just too juicy of a temptation to pass by without extra thought. Garak and Dukat hate each other, loath each other, so can you imagine their faces when they discover their kids are getting a little too close for comfort lmao? Plus, the angst in this ship would be fun to explore. Both on opposing sides of the war, (Like Weyoun's pairing), from rival families… Oh, yeah, this smacks of high Romeo and Juliet vibes, without the whole, you know, stupidity of killing themselves XD.

I know some of you aren't looking for a pairing, or are opposed to one, but in this fic, I'm exploring life, especially Cardassian life, and all that it entails. Romance, love, sexuality, that is a big part of life and to explore that in this fic will add some richness, I think. So, I've come up with some pairings I like the sound of, which I think will fit in with this fic, themes and plot, and leave it up to you beautiful people. I do want to note, though, all pairings will be slow-burn. I don't really do the whole love at first sight, and while being in the fic, and integral to some choices Harry takes down the road, it will not take the main focus of finding oneself, which is the main theme of this fic, away. That being said, please, give a vote. You can do this either by leaving it in a review, P.M'ing me the answer or voting in **_the Poll_ **I've set up on my homepage. The choices will be the same as listed above, however, if you have a choice not listed here or in the Poll, feel free to drop it in a review or PM. Cheers, lovelies!

 **THANK YOU** to everyone who followed, favourited and left a review! If you have a spare moment, please drop a review, their the Dilithium that keeps this fic trucking along ;).


	4. Chapter 4

**CHAPTER TWO: TROUBLE HAS A NAME.**

* * *

 _Mekor's P.O.V_

There was an archaic Cardassian axiom Mekor's father, Skrain Dukat, used to say to him when he was a child. Skrain would set his nimble hand upon his small shoulder, gaze out along the unfurling cityscape of Lakat from their walkway, and turn to him with those stormy eyes of his, that particular tempestuous hue of grey Mekor had inherited himself, and smile.

 _Trouble, my son, most often comes in threes._

His father would softly squeeze his shoulder.

 _Do not ever forget that._

Of course, in time Mekor did, in fact, forget it. As most children did with obscure anecdotes given by work-strained parents deep into the hours of twilight. Trouble, with Mekor's life of privilege, wealth and status, appeared, to him at least, to be so far out of his sphere of life it might as well be in the Gamma Quadrant.

It had all seemed so easy.

Straightforward.

 _Simple._

His father, Gul Dukat, was Prefect of Bajor, Head of Terok Nor, and his mother, his sweet, charming mother, was Chief Researcher at the Lakarian Institute of Science. There had been nothing, not one single thing, Mekor could have asked for that his parents would not give him.

And give him they did.

 _Everything._

As their only son, their only _child,_ Mekor knew he was pampered.

He had been tutored in the very best university of Cardassia Prime, that of his mothers, and came away with his Unit, in full accolades and distinction, in the esteemed fields of Biotechnology and Geophysics. He had, upon completion of his Unit at twenty-five, so young to a Cardassian, obtained himself a research position on a well-respected science vessel. Following he finished his mandatory military conscription for the next decade, naturally.

At thirty-one, as with all _good_ Cardassians, his future seemed set.

And he was happy.

His mother adored him. His father was proud. He was equally respected and feared by his colleagues. Admired by his superiors. He was well on his way to a high position in Central Command if he, in the next few stardates, played his hand well. Who knew? Perhaps, in the near future, the title of Gul was hovering on the horizon.

Of course, there had been a few… Snags in his ascent.

His father's rather impressive fall from grace, and subsequent surprise of a half Bajoran sister, was, to put it lightly, _hard._ His mother, quite rightly, had separated from him, and though Mekor had not seen his father in many a cycle after he had washed up at their door in toe with a dishevelled girl and his mother had promptly kicked them both out, this shift in fortune had not been permanent.

 _A Dukat is never down for long, son. Always, no matter what, get back up on your feet._ _And always make sure the men who put you down won't be able to do the same as you. Permanently._

Within a year, his father was back in good graces with Cardassia, and with the backing of the Dominion behind Gul Dukat's name things had gone back to the way they should have been all along.

His father restored in Central Command, his mother recalled to her post at the Lakarian Institute, and their family name, which meant _so_ much to a Cardassian, restored to its former glory.

Then Mekor had begun his military service that year and everything fell into place.

 _Order._

Delightfully comfortable order.

He had been serving as a tactical officer aboard a Galor-class ship, the very best in the Cardassian fleet -obviously Mekor would be on the best, he was _always_ amongst the best- when he caught wind of a mission to Terok Nor, recently appointed Deep Space 9 by those insipid Starfleet Commanders. He didn't catch much of the specifics, something or other about a dying Cardassian needing to be extradited home, but he was not interested in the details.

He was only interested in one thing.

 _His sister._

She, Ziyal was her name if the reports Mekor had heard were true, would be on the station. By the intelligence he had gathered, she was attending an… _Art_ school on Bajor.

 _Who had ever heard of a school for art?_

Yet, a speedy, and disappointingly effortless, hack into the Bajoran enrolment register revealed that particular school to be dismissed for the next few star cycles. The precise time the Cardassian dignitaries were to be docking upon Deep Space 9 to negotiate the senior Cardassian commander repatriation home.

She would be there, on Deep Space 9, he knew.

Right there.

Within reach.

Despite everything, or because of it, Mekor wanted to, at the very least, meet Ziyal. Greet her better than a quick glimpse of a bowed head before his mother, who had been raging and yelling and sobbing, had hastily sealed the doors on both her and his father, in spite of Mekor imploring her to reopen them.

By the time Mekor had succeeded in bypassing his mother's locking code and got the door free, his father and sister were gone. When he, eventually, managed to track them to the freighter his father had been captaining, a punishment undoubtedly given from Central Command for his… Indiscretions, Ziyal had already moved on to Deep Space 9.

A place he previously could not go.

 _Previously._

Mekor had heard a lot about Bajorans in his time growing up on Cardassia. Tales of their pointless religion, inane ways, weak virtues offered by imagined 'prophets', a need for a strong _Cardassian_ guiding hand, and yet… Yet this was his sister, and there was something special in that, he thought.

This sister was _his._

Mekor, by nature, much like his father, was possessive. Perhaps a trait exasperated by being a only child.

 _Not so only anymore._

Curiosity won.

It merely took a few greased palms, a sprinkling of threats here and there, to get himself on the delegation going to Deep Space 9. Ironically, his father, with his recent reinstatement to his high position of Legate, was spearheading the group.

It became all that much easier.

And then, for the first time in Mekor's pleasant life, _real_ trouble came.

 _She_ came.

With her strange, strange ways and her bright, peculiar green eyes. That sharp tongue and all too keen grin. That bizarre rush of hair, hair that…

That twisted and curled and glinted and-

The way when she was irritated her nose would coil _just_ so that her nose ridges bumped in the middle-

Or the odd quirk of an eye-ridge when something amused her-

Or the way she would laugh, abundantly laugh, wild and bright and high, without a care about how loud she was or where she was-

Or how she, even after hours of close quarters stuck in a cramped lift, could still smell so exquisitely of sunshine and sugar and silk swathed sex and-

And, of course, how could he forget that mean left hook that left him with a black eye?

What was it she had called him?

Ah, yes, a peacocking pompous prick.

How was he supposed to know, having grown up amongst the humans, she did not understand fighting, particularly throwing insults, was the Cardassian way of flirting?

So it was only natural that he had told her it was dangerous to use ones entire vocabulary in a single sentence.

She didn't especially like the jab at her intelligence.

He had not understood her telling him it was dangerous not to duck.

Not until her fist swung and clocked him straight in the face.

Looking back, Mekor thought he might have felt that first spark of love right at the moment her knuckle struck eye socket.

He was completely besotted by the time their fight had escalated to the point, even after the engineers had managed to crack open the lift the two had been stuck in from a malfunctioning locking system, they had barreled past the onlookers where, after a rather nasty headbutt on her part, she had swiftly hurled them both through a window.

It was completely bad luck that window happened to be attached to the room where the negotiation for Tekeny Ghemor's extradition was taking place.

It had taken most of the security guards present to tear the two apart.

To a Cardassian, that fight had been nothing less than a betrothal proposal.

It was just a shame that Mekor had not known _she_ didn't know that at the time.

In hindsight, after the fight, strapped to opposing Sick Bay beds, perhaps demanding their Bonding take place in his ancestral home rather than hers was a _bit_ hasty. Nevertheless, he _had_ learned to duck when a beaker came flying at his head when he refused to break the Bonding contract that, ignorant or not of Cardassian practices, _she_ had instigated.

Mekor _always_ had the best.

Yet, that all came much later.

The day Mekor came to Deep Space 9 was the day he discovered his father had been right all along. Trouble did come in three, and Mekor, by the end, could name them all.

 _Harriet._

 _Lily._

 _Elim._

Mekor and his perfect, simple, uncomplicated life would never be the same again.

It was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

And it all started when she strolled into that turbo lift to meet her father at the replicator, the exact same place Mekor was going to meet his...

* * *

 _Thoughts?_

 **Note:** So Mekor won! The official Harriet pairing in this fic is Fem!Harry/Mekor. For that reason, I wanted to do just a little excerpt from him before we move into them meeting, not only for you guys to get a hint of his character, what's to come, get some grounding on his back story, but to help myself feel him out too. Also, if this pairing was not your cup of tea, so much so that you can't stand reading anymore because of it, before all the good stuff starts coming I've given you guys the chance to jump ship without missing any plot.

This isn't really a chapter, I know it's really short compared to my others, but think of this as a little taster before the main meal comes rolling in.

 _ **Next chapter we're back with Harriet and co,**_ and, of course, Mekor's first 'real' appearance.

I hope you're all looking forward to it!

Thank you all for the wonderful reviews. Merlin knows how many times I've read each and every one lol. Thank you for the follows and favourites too! As always, if you have a spare moment, drop a little review, they keep the muses singing, and I will hopefully see you all very soon. The next chapter is already written and just needs a bit more tightening, so back to the plot we head!


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